Gujarat anti-terror law to take away civil liberties from citizens

Gujarat has passed, for the third time, a law that takes away from its citizens the civil liberties associated with a democracy, in the name of fighting terror and organized crime. The law had been passed, on earlier occasions, when Narendra Modi was the state’s chief minister. But the law failed to obtain the President’s assent both times. Now, of course, it is Modi who would advise the President on what to do with the bill when it comes up to him for assent. Under the law, the police can arrest and hold someone in their custody for six months, without any scope for bail. It gives state functionaries total immunity from prosecution for any act committed in good faith. These are provisions incompatible with democracy, even when the police force armed with such a law is a champion of human rights. They trample democracy underfoot, when they arm a police force with the track record of the Gujarat police for encounter killings. On May 16, 2015, the day the general election results proclaimed Narendar Modi India’s PM, the Supreme Court pronounced a judgment acquitting six people whom the Gujarat police had framed, tortured, extracted confessions from and successfully prosecuted in a Pota court and, later, in the Gujarat high court, for their alleged role in Askhardham attack .

In Adambhai Sulemanbhai Ajmeri and others vs State of Gujarat, Justice AK Patnaik and V Gopala Gowda acquitted not only the five people whose appeals against their conviction by lower courts the Apex Court was hearing but also another accused who had already served out his sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and so was not an appellant before the Court. The judgment said, “we intend to express our anguish about the incompetence with which the investigating agencies conducted the investigation of the case of such a grievous nature, involving the integrity and security of the Nation. Instead of booking the real culprits responsible for taking so many precious lives, the police caught innocent people and got imposed the grievous charges against them which resulted in their conviction and subsequent sentencing.” The Court takes on record the statements of the accused describing how they had been tortured in police custody, how they had been threatened to be eliminated if they did not confess to acts they had no clue about, how they were blindfolded, beaten, electrocuted and made to put their signatures to statements they did not make. But the Apex court did not throw out the Gujarat police’s case because it believed the convicts rather than the cops. The court dissected the socalled evidence presented by the Gujarat police and found glaring inconsistencies and contradictions. For instance, the police claimed to have recovered a letter written by one of the accused on the body of one of the Askhardham attackers. The attacker’s body had been riddled by bullets from the security forces. Yet, the letter supposedly recovered from the pocket of a dead terrorist’s blooddrenched clothing was spotless and creaseless.

This anomaly had come to the notice of the Gujarat high court as well. But the court dismissed it on the ground that “the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.” Supreme Court did not subscribe to this higher principle and interpreted it as corroborative evidence to support the accused’s claim that they had been framed. The law passed by the Gujarat legislature and slated to come up before President will bring Pota back to that state, if it receives the President’s assent. Other states could follow suit. That would be a major threat to Indian democracy. President Mukherjee should refuse to give his assent to the bill and ask the government to reconsider its advice in this regard.